Derrick Rose Rape Suit: 5 Crucial Facts About the Case and Aquittal

New York Knicks basketball player Derrick Rose was one of three men who were sued in August, 2015, by an anonymous woman who claimed that Rose, and his co-defendants Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton drugged and raped her in August 2013.

Here are five crucial facts about the case and the acquittal:

1. The plaintiff — or accuser — began a dating relationship in 2011 when Rose was with the Chicago Bulls. Rose began spending more time in Los Angeles in 2012 after he suffered a torn ACL during the NBA playoffs. The lawsuit alleges that in 2012, he began suggesting to the plaintiff that they should involve others in their sexual relationship, a suggestion that Rose admitted in his deposition that the plaintiff refused.

The relationship allegedly ended in the summer of 2013 after the accuser refused to engage in a foursome with Rose, Randall Hampton and his girlfriend, though in his deposition Rose denied that this was the reason that he ended the relationship.

2. The accuser’s roommate Keyana LaVergne is also named as a defendant. During her deposition, she testified that she believed her former roommate is attempting “to extort money from Derrick Rose based on sham allegations.” The roommate was added to the lawsuit after text messages exchanged between the two were leaked.

The lawsuit alleges that LaVergne edited the text conversations in an attempt to make the plaintiff appear to be a “gold digger.” Rose and LaVergne both claimed that the accuser filed her lawsuit out of anger over not being reimbursed for a sex toy that she purchased.

3. The accuser’s name was kept confidential during the lawsuit, which is typical in lawsuits in California which arise from sexual assault or abuse allegations. However, in September, 2016, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald ruled that the accuser can no longer remain anonymous.

This is something that Rose’s lawyers had argued for throughout the case based on the claim that the suit was an attempt at extortion from their client, and that the plaintiff should not be allowed to remain anonymous “while seeking millions in damages from a celebrity with whom she was in a long-term nonexclusive consensual sexual relationship.”

Rose’s lawyers had also argued that there had been so little public attention on the case over the past year that they “do not think any media restrictions are warranted or necessary, partly because the media has to some degree lost interest in the case.”

4. The parties all agree that the sexual encounter occurred on the night in question. The case ultimately revolves around whether or not the encounter between the woman and the three defendants was consensual — the woman says that there was no consent and the three men claim that she did consent.

5. On Wednesday, after roughly three hours of deliberations, the jury returned with a verdict in favor of the three men and against the accuser. The panel of six women and two men rejected the accuser’s claims. They instead concluded that the evidence showed the plaintiff had consented to the late-night encounter in 2013.

The eight-person jury alerted U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald at about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday that it had reached unanimous decisions on an array of allegations that had been leveled against the men.

5.

Derrick Rose Rape Suit: 5 Crucial Facts About the Case and Aquittal was last modified: by Breanna Khorrami